Inside the List

By the Numbers: Jordan Ellenberg’s math-based guide to life, “How Not to Be Wrong,” is at No. 15 in its second week on the hardcover nonfiction list. Ellenberg is a star mathematician at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where the local alternative weekly recently asked him about his specialty in number theory — “addition and subtraction and multiplication, all the things you can do with numbers,” as Ellenberg put it. “Haven’t we already figured all that stuff out?” the reporter wondered, and Ellenberg laughed. “We know nothing,” he said. “Right now we are standing in a tiny circle of light around our feet, and every 1,000 years, we push that circle out just a little bit. Every time someone sticks his toe out beyond that circle, it opens up whole worlds of inquiry.” Ellenberg is also a published novelist (I met him at a summer fiction workshop almost 20 years ago), but he told the Madison weekly that one of the things he’d learned in his creative writing classes was how much he liked math.

Very Authoritaious: Edward Klein’s latest mudfest, “Blood Feud” — it’s about tensions between the Clintons and the Obamas — enters the hardcover nonfiction list at No. 2. The book led to a memorably surreal moment on “Imus in the Morning” recently, when Don Imus and his regular guest Bo Dietl (along with the news reader Connell McShane) had a who’s-on-first exchange about the author. “Did you check out the new book by Edward Klein?” Dietl asked. “This is devastation. Edward Klein, I think, did that other book ‘Primary Colors’ or something. He is a real credited author.” Things only got more confused from there.

IMUS: The photograph we have . . . is not the guy who wrote “Primary Colors.” Hello? That is not the same guy. . . . Do you know, Connell — hang on a minute, Bo — do you have any idea?

McSHANE: If it is the right photograph I do not know. But I would assume Bo would have his facts right. So we will assume that.

DIETL: Well, my facts are that one author, and his name is Edward Klein, and Edward Klein was the author of “Primary Colors,” but Edward Klein is a very authoritaious author —

IMUS: How do we know that?

DIETL: The thing is that he is, that’s all.

IMUS: Well, no, that is not good enough. . . . You are an idiot.

McSHANE: Aren’t you thinking of Joe Klein?

DIETL: O.K. Edward Joe, Joe Edward, Edward Kennedy, what name did he go by? He had two different first names.

IMUS: He is a different guy. We have no idea who this guy is.

DIETL: He came out with a book.

IMUS: Anybody can write a book. . . . Joe Klein is a fairly legitimate journalist. But Edward Klein, we have no idea who this clown is.